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Comment by mirkules | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a moderator, but I agree that the question is not really constructive in the scope of what stack overflow is supposed to do: answer questions to specific problems. The question itself is interesting as are the answers, and the whole discussion around it is great, but it doesn't belong on that site.

Why is python not as fast as JavaScript is a completely different question than "An internal error occurred during updating maven project". The later seeks a solution to a problem while the former only encourages discussion but is impossible to solve (because it's not a solvable question).

So, I feel this question was appropriately tagged, or perhaps even not aggressively enough.

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I asked this question because I was a little bit frustrated with one page in my app which rendered in 800ms. 100ms was db time, the rest it was Ruby.

Sure, the answers won't help to solve my _specific_ problem. However in general I like to known how things work. It is not enough for me to read ordinary info about Ruby symbols. I have to read Ruby source code to understand them better (1) Thanks to this I understand Ruby symbols gc issue, a new feature of Ruby 2.2

Even more important is _intuition_ one can build reading the answers. Intuition about languages in general. I really like duck typing languages. Sometimes I need raw performance. So should I plan migration to statically typed languages (Java, Scala)? Or is it better to invest my time into learning Dart? Does Dart have _potential_ to solve my specific requirements?

As a software architect I have to predict a future a bit. And I must say that nostrademons answer helped me to learn something new today.

1) 2011 http://stackoverflow.com/a/4879142/3315

If you're going to move to a static language, I'd recommend Go over Java or Scala. Especially if you like duck typing (it has a static flavor of duck typing). I haven't used it for anything nontrivial (you can pry C from my cold, dead hands), but it looks like it solves the problems in its domain exceedingly well.

Regarding Dart: It looks nice. At work I'm forced to work in JS sometimes (I work at a game company that does contracting, and lately clients have started needing/wanting HTML5), and my opinion is that Dart looks better than it in every meaningful way. I've also begun to get the impression that Google has moved most of the V8 engineers over to Dart, but I don't have any hard evidence for this.

Honestly without knowing your problem, it's impossible to say whether or not either of these would solve it. My guess is that either of them could, as they're both languages that are orders of magnitude faster than Ruby and both seem to have large, fully featured standard libraries.

> the scope of what stack overflow is supposed to do: answer questions to specific problems

Honestly people should read the manual then. That will give you the specific answer to your question. Stackoverflow wanted to replace other message/discussion boards in regards to programming. It's veered away from that purpose and IMHO has become cumbersome to use. If you have to worry more about how you word your question than the question itself is it worth asking there?

> If you have to worry more about how you word your question than the question itself is it worth asking there?

well, you are supposed to ask a question after you have researched the solution, so the extra worry wouldn't actually be relevant.

The manual answers all questions related to programming.

The way I've always thought about and used StackOverflow is as a replacement for manuals, tutorials, and bug fixes—not at all a replacement for message boards or forums.

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